BUREAUCRACY IN AMERICA.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11635, 12 August 1905, Page 4

BUREAUCRACY IN AMERICA.

President Roosevelt is making a determined effort to free the United States public service from the trammels of red tape and bureaucracy. -With this object in view ha recently appointed a committee of five high- officials, including a son of President Garfield, to "investigate and decide on changes necessary to place the conduct of Government business in all its branches on the most economical and effective basis in the light of modern business practice." The President complains that there is a type of- bureaucrat who believes that his entire work, and the entire work of the Government, should be collecting papers referring to cases, commenting with eager minuteness on each, and corresponding with other officials in reference to every petty detail. These men care nothing for the case as it concerns the people, but only for their documents of the case, and instead of "arriving as quickly as possible at some intelligent solution of a difficulty the^ waste their time in searching records for precedents and in lengthy and fruitless correspondence. The "abuse of let-ter-writing is stated by the President to seriously impede public business. He has set up the committee with the avowed intention of making the Civil servants conduct the business of the country with as much coinmon-sonse and expedition as is displayed by the employees of a private business firm, and he hag so stirred up Officialdom, that ovcry department is strenuously endeavouring to reform itself before its affairs are spread out for the committee's inspection. President Roosevelt's efforts to secure reform will be watched with interest in most Englishspeaking countries. The departmental officer has made himself a terror everywhere to the ' public in general and to those who are compelled to do business with him in particular. His ways seem to

be the same the whole world over. New Zealand is more fortunate than, other countries in having a Civil service which, with; all its faults, is mainly inspired- by a desire to get through, the public business as simply and as expeditiously as possible. But even here we ha-ce specimens of the old type, who cling on to the methods of their grandfathers, and refuse to learn anytliing just -as' persistently as they refuse to forget anything.